Types Of Skin Conditions And Their Care

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Do Home Remedies for Wrinkles Really Work?

Are there any home remedies for wrinkles that really work? There is certainly no shortage of creams or lotions on the market that claim to soften, erase, or even prevent wrinkles. There is also nothing in medical journals to indicate that any of these products have been proven to work. That’s not to say that none of them work, there is simply a lack of concrete medical evidence showing they do.

Those who work with cosmetics have put a lot of time, energy, and money into developing and marketing anti-wrinkle products. If their success rates are less than stellar, what is there to be said about concoctions consisting of ingredients found in most kitchens or medicine cabinets?

Knowing Your Enemy

If you are considering creating a home remedy, there are a couple of steps you’ll want to take to assure some kind of success, unless you are a devotee of trial and error. You’ll want to know what causes wrinkles to form in the first place. There are a number of possible answers to that question, including age, worry, heredity, and being exposed to the hot sun too long and too often.

You’ll also want to have some understanding of the biological and chemical activities behind the formation of wrinkles. You’ll need to study what chemical compounds (or lack of chemical compounds) can cause wrinkles. If you find organic or inorganic chemical compounds being used in commercial products that appear to have some success, you might want to see if there is anything in your house that contains these magical compounds.

The Great Pentapeptide Hope

One compound that has received a lot of attention is a pentapeptide. If you look up pentapeptide in a medical dictionary, it will tell you that a pentapeptide is a polypeptide that contains five amino acid residues. The next step, of course, is to find what a polypeptide is. A polypeptide is a chain of amino acids. A pentapeptide is a chain of five amino acids. It is similar to a protein, but the chain that makes up a protein is much longer. Pentapeptides exist in your body, and presumably have some influence over whether or not you have wrinkles, where you have wrinkles, and how many wrinkles you have. Pentapeptides can be artificially synthesized, which is how they find their way into anti-wrinkle formulas. It may not be much help, but if your home remedy contains organic matter, there’s a chance it contains a few pentapeptides. The problem is you probably don’t know how many you have nor do you know how to isolate them. Ironically, the most promising commercial anti-wrinkle creams and lotions tend to rely heavily on the presence of pentapeptides, but the manufacturers of those creams and lotions won’t tell you how you can make your own.

If scientific research appears to be a dead-end in your search for a home remedy, the next best thing might be to see what others have tried and how their efforts have panned out. You need to remember, though, that what works for one person doesn’t always work for the next.

Plants, Foods, Collagen, and Elastin

If you go down the various lists of remedies people have put together, the first thing you may notice is that few, if any, of these remedies involve chemicals you purchase in the marketplace. Almost every one of them involves a food item. That should come as no surprise, since plants use many of the same chemicals for growth as humans. What you want to be looking for is something that doesn’t appear on the labels of food items. It is one or more chemical compounds that will cause collagen to form. Collagen is the key, as it is what provides the support structure for your skin. When collagen levels in the body decline, as they tend to do when we age, the skin loosens some of this support structure. Instead of being fresh and smooth, it becomes wrinkled.

Even though collagen may be the key, loading up on it won’t get rid of your problem. For one thing, when a wrinkle forms, it is somewhat irreversible. It’s not totally irreversible, but enough to make getting rid of it or reducing its appearance a definite challenge. There are few things short of a facelift that can be guaranteed to smooth out your skin.

Another key is elastin. The breakdown of elastin is something that can cause your skin to sag. There are plants that contain compounds which help prevent this breakdown of elastin. This is where food or plant items can serve as potential home remedies. Besides preventing the breakdown of elastin, many of these items contain powerful antioxidants, and oxidation is yet another enemy of your skin.

A few of the more popular home remedies are summarized here. You may need to try several before you find what works best for you. One non-plant, non-food item worth having on hand would be glycerin. Glycerin works as a moisturizer and can be very helpful in keeping your skin smooth and fresh to the point that some wrinkles may even vanish.

Top 5 Choices (Plus 1)

1. Aloe vera – The gel found in the leaf of the aloe vera plant is a known remedy for sunburn and minor skin irritations. It has healing powers as well and serves to improve the elasticity of your skin.

2. Ginger – Ginger helps in reducing or avoiding the breakdown of elastin. Ginger also has powerful antioxidant properties. Whereas aloe vera is applied topically, you can eat ginger or drink it as a tea.

3. Egg and Cucumber Mix – This is more of a temporary fix. Cucumber is well-known for its ability to make skin look and feel fresh. Egg white, on the other hand, tightens the skin. The combination will usually remove or reduce wrinkles, but only temporarily.

4. Nuts – Adding nuts to your diet is believed by many to significantly reduce wrinkles. This happens over a longer period of time. It is more a matter of a healthy, well-balanced diet being good for you and your skin. If you have a tree nut allergy, skip this piece of advice.

5. Garlic – Eating a little garlic every day works in much the same way as eating a few nuts every day. Garlic is excellent for keeping your skin looking young and fresh.

6. Water – A sixth item which deserves to be among the top five is water. Keeping hydrated is an excellent way to keep your skin young, fresh-looking, and wrinkle-free.